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Circumflex
The '''circumflex''' ('''ˆ''') (often mistakenly called a "caret", from the non-diacritical sign (^) of a similar shape) is a diacritic mark used in written Croatian language|Croatian, Esperanto, French language|French, West Frisian language|Frisian, Norwegian language|Norwegian, Romanian language|Romanian, Slovak language|Slovak, Vietnamese language|Vietnamese, Romaji|Romanized Japanese, Romanization of Persian|Romanized Persian, Welsh language|Welsh, Portuguese language|Portuguese, Italian language|Italian, Afrikaans language|Afrikaans, Turkish language|Turkish and other languages. It received its English name from Latin ''circumflexus'' (''bent about'')—a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη (''perispōménē''). In French, it usually denotes the absence of a trailing "s" (as in ''côte'', which means ''coast'' in English).
Pitch
The circumflex accent was first used in the Greek diacritics|polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred (subject to certain rules) on the accented syllable of a word, on vowel length|long vowels, and where there was a rise and then a fall in pitch accent|pitch. Sometimes it takes on the form of a tilde or inverted breve. Since Modern Greek has a stress (linguistics)|stress accent instead of a pitch accent, this diacritic has been replaced with an acute accent in the modern monotonic orthography.
Length
The circumflex accent marks a vowel length|long vowel in the orthography or transliteration of several languages.
- Akkadian language|Akkadian. In the transliteration of this language, the circumflex indicates a long vowel resulting from an aleph contraction.
- French language|French. The circumflex is used on ''â'', ''ê'', ''î'', ''ô'', ''û'', and, in some varieties of the language, such as in Belgian pronunciation, these vowels are often long; ''fête'' "party" is longer than ''fait'' . See also below.
- Friulian language|Standard Friulian.
- Japanese language|Japanese. In the Kunrei-shiki system of Romaji|Romanization, and occasionally in the Hepburn romanization|Hepburn system (as a surrogate for the macron).
- Jèrriais.
- Turkish language|Turkish. According to Turkish Language Association orthography, ''düzeltme işareti'' ("correction mark") over ''a'' and ''u'' is primarily used to indicate a long vowel on a basis of disambiguation. For example ''ama'' (but) against ''âmâ'' (blind), ''şura'' (that place, there) against ''şûra'' (council). Although official, the required system is complex and younger generations gradually decline using it.[www.tdk.gov.tr]
- Welsh language|Welsh. The circumflex is colloquially known as the ''to bach'' ("little roof"). It lengthens a vowel (''a, e, i, o, u, w, y''), and is used particularly to differentiate between homonym|homographs; e.g. ''tan'' and ''tân'', ''ffon'' and ''ffôn'', ''pin'' and ''pîn'', ''gem'' and ''gêm'', ''cyn'' and ''cŷn'', or ''gwn'' and ''gŵn''.
In Old Tupi, the circumflex indicated a semivowel.
Height
The circumflex is also used to indicate the relative Vowel height|height of some vowels:
- Portuguese language|Portuguese ''â'' , ''ê'' , and ''ô'' are higher vowels than ''á'' , ''é'' , and ''ó'' , respectively. The circumflex is only used on Stress (linguistics)|stressed vowels.
- Vietnamese language|Vietnamese ''â'' , ''ê'' , and ''ô'' are higher vowels than ''a'' , ''e'' , and ''o'' . The circumflex can appear together with a Tonal_language#Notational_systems|tone mark on the same vowel, as in the word ''Việt Nam''. Vowels with circumflex are considered separate letters from the base vowels.
Letter extension
- In Bulgarian language|Bulgarian, when transliterated with the Latin alphabet (in systems used prior to 1989), the sound represented in Bulgarian by 'â', although called a schwa (misleadingly suggesting an unstressed lax sound), is more accurately described as a close-mid back unrounded vowel#mid back unrounded vowel|mid back unrounded vowel . Unlike English language|English or French language|French, but similar to Romanian language|Romanian and Afrikaans language|Afrikaans, it can be stressed. The Cyrillic letter 'ъ' (er goljam) is often transliterated as 'â' or sometimes as a 'ŭ', often it is just written as 'a' or 'u'.
- In Chichewa language|Chichewa, ''ŵ'' denotes the voiced bilabial fricative , hence the name of the country ''Malawi|Malaŵi''.
- In Esperanto, it is used on ''c-circumflex|ĉ'', ''g-circumflex|ĝ'', ''H-circumflex|ĥ'', ''J-circumflex|ĵ'', ''S-circumflex|ŝ''. It indicates a completely different consonant from the unaccented form, and is considered a separate letter for purposes of collation. See Esperanto orthography.
- In pinyin romanized Standard Mandarin|Mandarin Chinese, the circumflex occurs only on ''ê'', which is used to represent the sound in isolation. This sound occurs rarely and is only used as an exclamation.
- In Romanian language|Romanian, the circumflex is used on the vowels ''â'' and ''î'' to mark the vowel , similar to Russian ''yery''. The names of these accented letters are ''â din a'' and ''î din i'', respectively. Note: the letter ''â'' appears only in the middle of words; thus, its majuscule version appears only in all-capitals inscriptions.
- In Slovak language|Slovak, the circumflex (''vokáň'') turns the letter ''o'' into a diphthong ''ô'' .
Tone
In some African languages, the grave accent is used to indicate a falling tone.
Other regular uses
- In Afrikaans it simply marks a vowel with an irregular pronunciation that is typically stressed. Examples of circumflex use in Afrikaans are ''sê'' (to say), ''wêreld'' (world), ''môre'' (tomorrow) and ''brûe'' (bridges).
- In Croatian it is mostly found above the letter ''a''. Its function is to distinguish homophones. Examples include ''sam'' (am) versus ''sâm'' (alone). Thus the correct translation of "I am alone" is ''Ja sam sâm''. This indicates a falling pitch, albeit less vital than other tonal languages. Another example: ''da'' (yes), ''dâ'' (gives).
- In French language|French, it generally marks the former presence of the letter ''s'' in the spelling of the word – for example, ''hôpital'' (hospital), ''hôtel'' (hostel), ''forêt'' (forest), ''rôtir'' (to roast), ''côte'' (coast), ''pâte'' (paste). Since the older spelling is often one on which English words are based, as in the foregoing examples, the circumflex provides a helpful guide to Anglophone readers of French. ''Fenêtre'' (window), for instance, is derived from the Latin word ''fenestra''; the s is seen in the English word ''defenestrate'' derived from that Latin root. Certain close homophones are distinguished by the circumflex, for instance ''cote'' ("level", "mark") and ''côte'' ("rib" or "coast"). The letter ''ê'' is also normally pronounced open-mid vowel|open, like ''è''. In the usual pronunciations of central and northern France, ''ô'' is pronounced close-mid vowel|close, like ''eau''; in Southern France, no distinction is made between close-mid vowel|close and open-mid vowel|open ''o''. See also Use of the circumflex in French.
- In Turkish language|Turkish, the circumflex over ''a'' and ''u'' is used to indicate when a preceding consonant (''k'', ''g'', ''l'') is to be pronounced as a palatal consonant|palatal plosive; , (''kâğıt'', ''gâvur'', ''mahkûm'', ''Gülgûn'') or alveolar lateral (''Elâzığ'', ''Halûk''). The circumflex over ''i'' is used to indicate a nisba suffix (''millî'', ''dinî'').
- In Welsh language|Welsh, the circumflex, apart from being used as a lengthening sign (see above), is sometimes used with plural forms, notably where the singular ends in an ''a'', to indicate the stressed syllable (which would normally be on the penult|penultimate syllable), e.g. ''camera'', ''drama'', ''opera'', ''sinema'' → ''camerâu'', ''dramâu'', ''operâu'', ''sinemâu''.
Exceptional use
- In English language|English the circumflex, like other diacriticals, is sometimes retained on loanwords that used it in the original language; for example, ''wikt:rôle|rôle''. In Britain in the eighteenth century—before the cheap penny post and an era in which paper was taxed—the circumflex was used in postal letters to save room in an analogy with the French use. Specifically, the letters "ugh" were replaced when they were silent in the most common words, e.g., "thô" for "though", "thorô" for "thorough", and "brôt" for "brought".
- In Italian language|Italian, ''î'' is sometimes used in the plural of nouns and adjectives ending with ''-io'' , although the spelling with a normal ''i'' is by far the most usual one. Other possible spellings are ''-ii'' and obsolete ''-j'' or ''-ij''. For example, the plural of ''vario'' ("various") can be spelt ''vari'', ''varî'', ''varii''; the pronunciation will usually stay with only one .
- In Norwegian language|Norwegian, it is used, with the exception of loan words, on ''ô'' and ''ê'', almost exclusively in the words "fôr" (from Old Norse language|Norse ''fóðr''), meaning "animal food", to differentiate it from ''for'' (the preposition); ''lêr'', meaning "skin" (Norse ''leðr'') and "vêr" (Norse ''veðr''), meaning "weather", both ''lêr'' and ''vêr'' only in the Nynorsk Norwegian.
- In Swedish language|Swedish, when transcribing dialectal speech, the circumflex is often used to denote an ''a'' or ''o'' which is pronounced dialectally as if it has been written ''ä'' or ''ö'' .
- In Interlingua, the circumflex is rare. Interlingua has no diacritics except in foreign loanwords.
- J. R. R. Tolkien would use the circumflex to denote a long vowel when transcribing words from his fictional languages.
Technical notes
The ISO-8859-1 character encoding includes the letters ''â'', ''ê'', ''î'', ''ô'', ''û'', and their respective majuscule|capital forms. Dozens more letters with the circumflex are available in Unicode. Unicode also uses the circumflex as a combining character.
See also
- Caret
- Caron
- Macron
- Tilde
- Turned v
References
External links
- Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents
- Keyboard Help - Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer
Category:Alphabetic diacritics
Category:Greek alphabet
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Sources: StartLearningNow, Wikipedia | Usage license: GNU FDL
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